


a simple change

by Larrant



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:49:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4298376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the what-if that changes the world.</p><p>12/02/17: long time in coming but finally DISCONTINUED (i got rly leery of this idea when i remembered i'd written this) (lmao)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a simple change

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: **nothingtosee--here.tumblr.com**  
>  I'm always in search of new ideas and inspiration- so if you have the time, it'd be awesome if you were able to pop me a request or two~ =0  
> I'm a sucker for angst and tragedy. Also, heap all that non-con on me. I thrive on writing toxic and abusive relationships, haha. x3
> 
> unbeta-ed. idk. might leave it as a one-shot. IDUNNOYET.TOOMANYIDEAS.

_"I just want you to know all the facts before you make your decision," the murmur is soft, understanding- for a moment he's almost lost trying to place the faint accent on the words._

"I..." Elliot starts. Stops. He doesn't know what to say. Or, as a matter of fact, how to say it.

Unbidden, the words of 'mr. robot' drag again at him, grate on his mind and twist in his thoughts. Oddly familiar, in a voice that starts as the mysterious man's and spirals into his own at some unknown point in time.

And Tyrell's words too, they pull at him, push and pull, like a seesaw ride, a turbulent, insidious thought that digs in deep and refuses to leave, because there's a tiny part of his mind that tells him he can't be a dreamer forever, that he needs a job if he wants to keep on living, that he needs to conform to the system eventually-- and eventually the stress of the two options blurs itself in his mind because he doesn't know what to do but this isn't right and there's something he's missing here something he can't put his finger on and he blurts something out merely to just fill the silence, but its a word he'll never be able to take back, and he thinks he knows that even as he utters it without conscious thought- "Okay."

There is a moment where he almost stops breathing.

And then Tyrell smiles.

It would have been the sort of smile that is charming, and genteel, but Elliot can see right through it, can see the jagged edges of the man's lips that reveal the dark, smug satisfaction of someone who has known where this will end right from the start. Because in all truth- who wouldn't accept a job offer from the biggest company controlling the world.

Elliot is numb inside though. He can't fully comprehend what just happened, can't fully comprehend what he just said. The (interim) (but soon to be permanent) CTO is guiding him across to the windows, he realizes quite dimly- a hand not quite on his shoulder, murmuring words of possibilities and prospects. He finds himself nodding without knowing what is said.

So this is to be his future.

He swallows, looks up at the slate gray eyes that watch him constantly- and tries to smile.

 

* * *

 

When he gets home, he looks at the white envelope still on his desk, runs a hand across the white paper, and hesitates.

It isn't so much the envelope as much as it is the invisible ties with fsociety it links him with. There's certainly no chance he can keep it- not now that he's accepted Tyrell's job offer, not now that he's working for Evil Corp. He should destroy it and destroy all the ties he has with the people at fsociety. It's better for everyone that way.

He almost does, almost breaks the disc in half and then sets it alight, but something stops him- the same thing that had stopped him deleting the file back when the Evil Corp servers had been hacked. His conscience, perhaps. "But that's not the truth really, is it?"- a faintly mocking voice asks from behind- eyes widening, he whirls around only to see a flash of a scarf and a torn jacket and then thin air.

He swallows, stares into the empty space that looks right back. After a moment, he shakily turns back to his screen. Not real, he tells himself. _Not real_. Someday, his delusions are going to kill him.

"Fuck," he mutters.

He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't think Tyrell would accept a resignation well, not considering the unchanging slate gray eyes that had been focused on him even when he had been leaving the room.

Elliot spends about twenty minutes consolidating his thoughts- goes to a shelf and crushes a morphine tablet first, snorting it and feeling the burn up his nose and then the soothing feeling as his muscles relax and a feeling of dreaminess drifts into his consciousness.

Eventually he arrives at the unwilling dead end conclusion that he needs to find out more about Tyrell first, job or no job- nevermind necessity, he needs the familiarity that hacking someone at night too, badly. His nerves are shattered from earlier and the morphine is only half helping. He resists the urge to crush another pellet and snort it.

Instead, he pulls up a chair and logs in to his computer. He Googles first. Finds out everything he can without actually hacking into anything- there's usually a lot to find, even without an email account or private access to Facebook.

"Tyrell Wellick" leads to his company, his university, and his work experience- as well as his middle name. And then variations of his name with numbers and dashes and omissions ("Tyrell_W" and"T_Wellick", mainly) leads to his schooling, alongside his joint nationality and Swedish background, and his wife who is also Swedish and from Stockholm. And then his birthdate, and his birthdate lets him go on to find the minutest details, and he finds site profiles, marks left on the internet from years past- name, age, hobbies and relationships.

It's amazing how much the internet _offers_ without even having to hack anything.

It takes him less than an hour to get a good impression of the man overall- and by then he's calmed down a little; the comfort doing this brings is soothing. He likens it to how normal people interact and find out more about friends. Not that this is the best example of that.

He runs a brute force program to find Wellick's email password- many of his site profiles and social media profiles lead to the same email, tyrellwellick@evilcorp-intl.com, his work account; normally people will use the same password for everything, with exceptions of perhaps numbers or capital letters. The same runs true for Tyrell- olofsson66 is repeated across the board, sometimes with a capital O on the olofsson and other times with just one six, on his Facebook, twitter, and other numerous accounts. The password had been simple to find too; almost too simple- the wife's maiden name and Sweden's National Day- June the 6th.

On first glance, his email is... normal. On second glance, it stays normal. That's the only way to describe it. Uninteresting, and mundane. He checks Facebook next- but that too provides nothing, not even when he digs in deep. Wellick's normal in every sense of the word, nothing is weird, nothing stands out- it's as mundane as Angela's profiles. Facebook photos, profiles, friends, messaging... he's not sure what he expected but it hadn't been this.

And then, as he clicks on another timeline picture, showing the man alongside his wife at a dinner party, dressed in a suit and with a glass of champagne in hand- the realization slaps him on the face like the picture of the man smiling at him.

He'd thought it had been too simple.

There was no other explanation other than it  _had_ been too simple.

No-one was this clean, _no-one_. Tyrell had talked about how they were going to upgrade the system- the system had still been out of date, that was why everything was so easy to find. Not even two-factor authentication.

 _Fuck_. Tyrell had known that Elliot would hack him, somehow. He's not sure how, or why, he's not even sure if it's certain it was planned- but he knows suddenly that he needs to wipe everything. It's too dangerous not to, whether or not the very same man had given him a job, whether or not his sudden fear was realized or not. Just the possibility was dangerous enough that he needed to wipe.

"Shit," he says, aloud.

He burns all of it- tosses microchips into the microwave and snaps discs in half- halfway through something explodes in the microwave. He might need to get a new one; that's fine, microwaves are less than 50 dollars. He destroys everything before tossing it into a black bin bag and throwing it into the trash. Everything is done in a frenzy of action, and when he's finished, there's nothing left of his prior data, its all gone. He's got backups- but he'll need to wait awhile first.

Once he's finished lugging out the trash bag and tossing it in front of the apartment, he's too exhausted to do much but go back upstairs and collapse on the bed, forgoing even a shower- he almost forgets to feed Qwerty. The fish looks distinctly unhappy with him, and wriggles its fins to show its displeasure. He can't do much but waggle his fingers in response. The fish just swims away and ignores him.

Elliot closes his eyes, curls up on his side on the sheets, and tries not to think about Evil Corp or fsociety. Sleep is not fast in coming, and he drifts off to dreams of white masks and voices that aren't his own and words that speak of changing the whole world.

And when he wakes, it is to two new texts on his phone, a missed call from Angela telling him he's needed rather urgently at work, and an unread email from Tyrell Wellick asking for a meeting at 6 PM sharp that evening.

He has a feeling life is going to get a lot more hectic from now on.

**Author's Note:**

> this needs editing, i haven't even proof-read it


End file.
